{"id":7935,"date":"2026-10-01T01:56:01","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T01:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=7935"},"modified":"2026-10-01T01:56:01","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T01:56:01","slug":"you-dont-need-ai-to-be-concerned-about-bioweapons-development-but-it-helps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=7935","title":{"rendered":"There Are Plenty of Reasons to Be Concerned About Bioweapons Development\u2014Even Without AI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><strong>You\u2019d have to inoculate your entire population\u2014and maybe that wouldn\u2019t work by the time the pathogen circulated back around to you.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">The Soviet Union was very much a castle on the hill. The wall hadn\u2019t come down yet when they were building the plague super-weapon. And the Russians didn\u2019t exactly fly to Paris for the weekend, so maybe there was this idea of, \u201cWe\u2019ll inoculate everybody with a plague vaccine and the West can all die off and we\u2019ll march in later and take over.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><strong>You<\/strong> <strong>also point out that plague was perhaps the first bioweapon\u2014when a 14th-century army led by a descendant of Genghis Khan <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Siege_of_Caffa\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Siege_of_Caffa&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Siege_of_Caffa\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">threw plague-ridden corpses<\/a> over the walls of the Republic of Genoa.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Yeah, it has had a long history, and it\u2019s something pandemic planners and Pentagon war gamers consider a very serious threat. Pneumonic plague is airborne, with a 100 percent kill rate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><strong>There aren\u2019t many things with that kill rate.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Just rabies virus and plague. So, working to erase the existing medical countermeasure of antibiotics from a disease with a 100 percent case fatality rate [as the Soviets did]\u2014that is <em>dark<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><strong>You even made your plague a chimera\u2014two pathogens in one!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Only because the Soviet scientists did it in the 1980s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><strong>You think such demonic things still exist in Russia?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">I can\u2019t imagine <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/globalbiodefense.com\/2018\/03\/13\/what-we-know-about-the-soviet-designed-nerve-agent-novichok\/\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/globalbiodefense.com\/2018\/03\/13\/what-we-know-about-the-soviet-designed-nerve-agent-novichok\/&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/globalbiodefense.com\/2018\/03\/13\/what-we-know-about-the-soviet-designed-nerve-agent-novichok\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">that they wouldn\u2019t<\/a>. The way the State Department describes it, the illegal Soviet-era program was absorbed into the new Russian program. Which is deeply disturbing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\"><strong>So, what\u2019s next on your agenda? More terrifying scenarios?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">[<em>Laughs<\/em>.] I write in my acknowledgements that the point is not panic. The point is <em>pressure<\/em>. On book tour, I\u2019ve had so many people [who\u2019d heard my book was terrifying] say, \u201cI read it and I actually feel <em>less<\/em> terrified.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">You begin to realize there are existential fears that are based on hypothetical worry, and then there are real threats that you should be aware of. I would hope that my books would add to <em>that<\/em> part of the conversation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/you-dont-need-ai-to-be-concerned-about-bioweapons-development-but-it-helps\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You\u2019d have to inoculate your entire population\u2014and maybe that wouldn\u2019t work by the time the pathogen circulated back around to you. The Soviet Union was very much a castle on the hill. The wall hadn\u2019t come down yet when they were building the plague super-weapon. And the Russians didn\u2019t exactly fly to Paris for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[370,83,304,755,1450,378,563,1449,1106,381],"class_list":["post-7935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-gadgets","tag-ai-panic","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-biology","tag-climate-desk","tag-pandemics","tag-qa","tag-terrorism","tag-the-ai-issue","tag-viruses","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>There Are Plenty of Reasons to Be Concerned About Bioweapons Development\u2014Even Without AI - Silvybrand Lifestyle Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In her new book on biological warfare, Annie Jacobsen didn\u2019t even discuss AI because scientists can already warp Mother Nature to create extinction-level events.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=7935\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"There Are Plenty of Reasons to Be Concerned About Bioweapons Development\u2014Even Without AI - 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